Abstract:
Readability, from a psycholinguistic perspective, is the intrinsic difficulty of
texts to be understood. This paper presents the results of a study carried out
to find out the relationship between linguistic complexity, readers’ ability and
the comprehension tasks and the readability of a text. The research employed a
quasi-experimental method where the complexity of texts was manipulated to
construct two reading comprehension tests. The tests measured different aspects
of reading comprehension, using an evaluation model based on psycholinguistic
approach. The tests were administered to senior secondary students from three
schools in the district of Jaffna, Sri Lanka. A total of 208 students participated in
this study. The results revealed that not only the linguistic complexity of the text
but also the readers’ ability and the nature of the comprehension tasks affected
the readability of texts.
